


the other side of winter

by mollivanders



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Katniss is fifteen, winter comes to District 12 in a cold blast of snow that covers the Seam in ashy snowflakes. They seep through Katniss’ wool gloves, made with the last of her father’s earnings, and make her teeth chatter in the drafty classroom. She’s never seen anything like it before and never wants to see anything like it again.</p><p>(Prim’s thin cough keeps her up that, weak and strangled in the night.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the other side of winter

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: the other side of winter**  
>  Fandom: The Hunger Games  
> Rating: PG  
> Characters: Gale/Katniss  
> Author's Note: Word Count - 778. Written for faded_facade who requested _there's no such thing as a winter wonderland in District 12_ at my Winter Wonderland 2012. Warning for animal death.  
>  Disclaimer: The Hunger Games does not belong to me.

When Katniss is fifteen, winter comes to District 12 in a cold blast of snow that covers the Seam in ashy snowflakes. They seep through Katniss’ wool gloves, made with the last of her father’s earnings, and make her teeth chatter in the drafty classroom. She’s never seen anything like it before and never wants to see anything like it again.

(Prim’s thin cough keeps her up that, weak and strangled in the night.)

Her struggling feet leave tracks in the snow.

She stumbles across Gale in the woods, as always. He has become as much a part of the woods as she is, or her father ever was. Tonight he’s crouched low, huddled at the base of a tree and rubbing his chest to stay warm. He’s brought a blanket, which is more than she’s done, and she wants to stay there with him, in the relative warm and darkness of the woods.

(Prim’s cough echoes in her memory.)

“I can’t,” she says. “Prim’s sick.”

There are a thousand things he could say to her, that any boy would say to her. No, stay. Prim’s always sick. Stay here with me. Instead, he stands up, the snow shaking off his broad shoulders, and wraps the blanket around her shoulders, tying the ends in a knot like a cape.

(This, she is still not used to.)

“Game should be easy to track in the snow,” he says, and she is grateful. “If they’re out. My traps are all empty tonight.”

This is winter in District 12.

+

Winter lays heavy on them for two months, months where they scrape by with squirrel and wild dog and if they’re lucky, a stray winter bird. Katniss can feel her ribs sticking out and hear her mother’s tired shuffle, the moans of the less fortunate starving to death on their table. But by now, they’ve learned; adapted, as only they know how to do. Sleep in the trees, not below them. Don’t build fires unless you like wolf meat. Cover your tracks, because not every Peacekeeper is as lax as Darius.

But after two months of soft crying and empty stomachs, they finally catch a break.

A bear, out early from hibernation, gets caught in one of Gale’s traps and Katniss takes aim, shoots it between the eyes without a second thought. Gale claps her on the back and they laugh as they bound through the snow, legs sinking knee-deep in the drift. The damp seeps through Katniss wool socks and she doesn’t mind, not today. The animal’s black coat soaks up the snow, wet fear drying on the bear’s nose. 

All Katniss can think is: the fur alone will fetch a small fortune. Some merchant’s son will sleep well under it, and Prim’s belly will be full.

“Have you ever seen one before?” Katniss asks Gale and he shakes his head. “How are we going to move it?” Gale circles the beast, prodding at it with his boot. “It’s not bigger than the deer we got last spring,” he says thoughtfully. “I bet Greasy Sae would buy it.”

In the end, they make a sled out of fallen tree limbs and drag it to the Hob. Katniss buys Prim a birthday trinket with the extra money, a ribbon for her hair.

“Don’t tell her about the bear, will you?” she asks Gale.

+

It’s nearly spring, a faint promise of warmer days and shorter nights upon them when a last, furious snowstorm hits the district. Nobody is prepared and the school is closed early, as are the mines. Katniss is tired of being cooped up, tired of listening to her mother pace and Prim’s patient hunger, so she sneaks out to the rock instead of going straight home.

She’s barely surprised when he joins her a few minutes later.

“It’s kind of pretty, isn’t it?” he says, knees curled to his chest as they stare out at the valley below. Everything is blanketed in white, and the icicles on trees glitter painfully in the sunlight. Katniss shivers. The rock is still cold and hard beneath them.

“Not really,” she says, thinking of the layers of grime and poverty two, maybe three feet down. “I like spring better.”

Gale is quiet for a long moment next to her before he slowly exhales, stretching out his legs. He’s getting taller every day, sure movements belying his strength.

“I didn’t say it was my favorite,” he replies, leaning back. She turns to face him, curious, and catches something burning behind his eyes.

“Summer,” she guesses. His pupils jump in a hot flash, but Gale stays quiet.

It stays with her all the way home.

_Finis_


End file.
